


Otherside

by griners



Category: Football RPF, gerlonso - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/griners/pseuds/griners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been to the other side, he’s seen things no one will ever see. And Xabi tries to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Otherside

“I just- I don’t understand why you’d be interested in a place like this.”

He looked around. The walls smelled of chemicals, degrading and falling on top of themselves, the rooms were small and simple and void, and he thought, _because this is perfect_.

“You don’t get the true story from places who demand ten thousand dollars a month for each patient,” Xabi said, and the woman listened closely. “I’m not looking for a made up story or a script that’s been written a thousand times. I’m looking for what someone goes through, the real story.” He swiped his eyes over the place again, whispered, “And this is as real as it gets.”

.

“This is our most recent patient, Steven Gerrard,” she stopped in front of the room, hugged the stack of papers against her chest. “Please, don’t push it with him. We’re trying to initiate the healing process, and it doesn’t happen over night.”

Xabi straightened his tie, nodded solemnly before opening the door. Steven sat on a large round table in the middle of the room, conveniently creating a distance between the two men, and Xabi sat as well, put down his notebook, ignored the stink of alcohol in the room.

Steven was young, but he didn’t look like it. The circles under his eyes were heavier and more pronounced than he’d ever seen, dark pools that told stories he was hoping to know. His features had lines caused by time and drugs and anything and everything you’d imagine. His eyes were empty, lost, raw. Beautiful, a poisonous beauty.

“Mr. Gerrard, I’m Xabi Alonso, psychologist.” He extended his hand for the other man to shake, but Steven didn’t move. Xabi cleared his throat. “I’m simply here for research. Trying to gather enough information for a lecture I’m giving on Saturday, so believe me when I say I mean no harm.”

Steven nodded, muttered a barely audible, _ok_ , and his voice sounded raspy, aged, the broken cliché. Xabi stared down at his notebook, the questions he had pointed out, the process and the answers he didn’t have and everything he wanted to have, but didn’t know how to ask. He opened his mouth, gapped a little and he swore he saw a smile from Steven.

The older man leaned forward on the table, lacing his hands on top of it, breathed in deeply, said, “Cocaine. Heroin. Also the usual, alcohol, smoking, everything that ruins you, I’ve tried it. I’ve seen death before my eyes, and kept going. I’ve been to the other side.”

His mouth dried. “And back?”

Steven shook his head, and the corner of his mouth curled up. “I’m not sure I’m back yet.”

He leaned back again, and Xabi had a feeling that was the most he would tell him today.

“Can you, uhm,” he grasped for control, frowning at the papers, and the words didn’t make sense anymore. He slid them aside, tugged at his jacket, stared at Steven with all the sincerity he could muster. “What made you start?”

“You’ll never understand.”

“Try me.”

Steven raised an eyebrow, smiled a little, cocked his head to the file on the far end of the table. “That has my name on it. You’ve read it, looked it over, analyzed it.” A pause, “You know why I started.”

Xabi set his jaw. “Your girlfriend died, two years ago.”

Steven nodded slowly, his eyes getting heavier, said, “That’s right,” like any confirmation was needed at all.

“So that’s what made you start? Couldn’t handle her death?”

Steven stares, eyes burning and painted hard, and Xabi felt exposed, no protection, no support, open to the world, and it was terrifying. “You come in here, dressed in a suit, with a three thousand dollar watch, two hundred dollar shoes, and you want to _understand_?” he seethed, and he leaned closer again, squinting his eyes. “You have no idea what I’ve seen. Because the things that have happened to me don’t happen to people who wear suits to rehab clinics, those things don’t happen in their world. You claim you want to understand, to teach what you count on learning here, but believe _me_ when I say, you’ll never understand, if you’ve never been through it.” His eyes were harder with each word. “Knowing every drug in the book by heart doesn’t make you an expert in them.” He reached for his shirt, pulled it up until the needle marks were visible. “This. This makes you an expert in them.” He pulled the sleeve back down, crossed his arms, looked at Xabi like he was a lost prey and Steven was the wolf that threaded quietly around him. “And we’re done here.”

.

He comes back the next day. The lady on the front desk looks him over and Xabi can only imagine the things Steven told her about him. He goes into the room nonetheless, and Steven’s lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and he breathes out a sigh when the door closes behind Xabi. “How did I know you’d come back?”

“You’re a smart man,” Xabi replies. He gets a chair from the table, drags it near the bed, and Steven hasn’t looked at him yet, but he doesn’t mind. “You’re right. I haven’t been through it. And I honestly hope I never have to go through it. But I plan on understanding it as damn well as I can, and I need you for that.”

“Because I’m twisted? Broken?” The words rolled off simply, and Steven turned his eyes to him, and Xabi held them.

“Because you’ve been to the other side. And I want to know what it looks like.”

They looked at each other for a while longer before Steven drifted his gaze away and sat up on the bed, against the wall, and his mask fell off a little. “Alright. But only because you got rid of the suit.”

.

“What does it feel...” he taped his pen against his book, and he knew the words were worthless even before they left his mouth, but he was never good with questions, anyway. “To be addicted?”

“Like you’re falling,” he answered honestly, staring down at his hands. “It feels like you’re flying high and then someday someone takes your fucking wings away and you’re falling so hard and fast you don’t even fucking realize it’s happening, until you hit the ground.” He closed his eyes. “Rock bottom.”

“Did- did you ever ask for help?”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing like that where I come from. If you get into it, you don’t back out, you don’t _ask_ for an out. The only reason I’m here is because I was found passed out in an alley, and,” he gave a bitter laugh, “No one would identify me.”

He’s never seen emotion in his eyes, but he sees it now. It lasts a second, but it’s there, sadness, he thinks, and it’s hauntingly real, palpable, throat tightening.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve experienced?”

And Steven looks at him like he’s saying _I can’t pick one_ , but Xabi just stares back, and Steven answers, “Demons. I’ve seen the demons inside people, something so strong and so horrifying that it only comes out when you’re less expecting it. I’ve seen people kill themselves because of it. Seen them never waking up again because they didn’t think they’d handle it.”

He felt the atmosphere get thicker around him, the air scattering away, and he felt like the words were painful to hear, and even more painful to be spoken. “Did you ever think about quitting?”

Steven looked at him like Xabi had all the innocence in the world and said, “Not the kind of quitting you’d think.”

.

He doesn’t bring his notebook the next morning, and Steven doesn’t comment on it. Xabi asks the questions, tries to grasp every word that comes out of Steven’s mouth because it’s not _what_ he says, he realizes, it’s _how_ he says it, and he can’t write that down on paper.

“I was heading nowhere. And she stayed.” He’s not smiling anymore, and Xabi swallows thickly. “I didn’t start after her death; I’d already tried it earlier, much earlier. I remember her shaking me, calling for me, I remember her voice being panicked and scared, but I couldn’t speak. I don’t even know what I took to get like that, I just couldn’t react.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, breathed in an attempt to calm himself down. “I heard her running around the house and out the door, and I didn’t move off the couch. I was numb all over, and I didn’t answer, and- and. She never came home.”

Xabi’s voice was pained when he spoke. “Did it hurt? When you were on drugs, did it still hurt?”

Steven blinked, curled his lips up lazily, sadly, “Yeah. I just pretended it didn’t.”

Xabi shook his head, and it just- it didn’t make sense to him, how, how someone could _get_ like that- so- so desperate, so _hurt_.

“Did no one ever tell you to stop? To get your life back together? Did no one try to help?”

“Xabi...” and he felt like a ten year old discovering life wasn’t the paradise he’d thought it was, “Everyone died before they could help others. They couldn’t even help themselves.”

.

“Is it good? Here?”

Steven stared out his bedroom window, shrugged. “It’s better than outside.”

Xabi paused, frowned, “Do you think you’ll ever be fully healed?”

Steven pursed his lips, gazed at the beautiful expanse of grass and flowers ahead of him, said, “No. But no one’s ever fully healed of anything. The marks we try to leave behind keep us from forgetting.” He caught Xabi’s eyes. “And maybe that’s not so bad.”

.

“Your lecture is tomorrow,” Xabi nodded. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. I think I am.”

Steven tilts his head, slides closer to Xabi on the couch. “Is something wrong? Did you have anything else to ask?”

Xabi looked at him, and Steven looked back, and Xabi kissed him because he could never ask it all or understand it all and he wondered if it even mattered. Xabi kissed him because he’d never seen anyone so real and Steven kissed him because Xabi was everything good he had and he hadn’t corrupted Xabi, he hadn’t wrecked him like he had with good things that were once in his life, and he considered that a win.

.

Xabi rushed into the clinic the next day. He was smiling, grinning, because his lecture was amazing and he’d never been so confident in what he was saying and he’d never felt so proud of himself.

He went through the small corridor and turned right at the end of it, opened the door to Steven’s room, but- but. The room was empty.

The woman he’d talked to on the first day approached him quietly, hesitantly, said, “Dr. Alonso?”

“Yes?” Xabi replied, frowning, and his hand didn’t leave the door knob.

The woman’s eyes watered, and she looked down, crossed her arms tightly on her chest. Her first words were, “He was very sick,” and Xabi didn’t catch anything else.

Later that night, before he went to sleep, he realized you don’t need to be addicted to feel like you’re falling.


End file.
